Benchmarking time spent in beat functions, 'avatar update' is very expensive

Uveso

When you test the beats from the Ui did you remove the UI beat throttling system from FAF ?
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/blob/deploy/fafdevelop/lua/ui/game/gamemain.lua#L650

This function is removed (destructive hook) in my AI mod.
This is fixing the issue with odd numbers (0 income) inside the mini economic window:
https://github.com/Uveso/AI-Uveso/blob/master/hook/lua/ui/game/gamemain.lua#L21

So if player test this with my AI then there is no throttle flag/function.
In case you get issues/bug reports.

crispweed

Ok @uveso, thanks for the heads up!

OnBeatTimings measures separate times for throttled and non-throttled beat functions, which also requires, as you say, destructive hooking of the OnBeat() function in gamemain.lua. This then means that there's effectively a conflict between the hooking in the OnBeatTimings and AI-Uveso mods.

(If these mods are both enabled, then I guess that, depending on the order in which hooks are applied, either the timings will all be shown as zero, or timings will be shown but the issue you were seeing with odd numbers in the mini economic window will come back.)

It's pretty straightforward to do the same kind of timings without destructive hooking, however. This could be done by replacing the OnBeat() implementation in OnBeatTimings mod with the following:

local originalOnBeat = OnBeat 
function OnBeat()
    local time = CurrentTime()
    originalOnBeat()
    onBeatTimes[nextOnBeatTime] = CurrentTime() - time
    if nextOnBeatTime == table.getn(onBeatTimes) then
        nextOnBeatTime = 1
    else
        nextOnBeatTime = nextOnBeatTime + 1
    end
end

When the throttling thing is enabled, however, measuring throttled and non-throttled beat functions together makes it much harder to get a clear signal out of this kind of benchmarking, I find, since there is a kind of feedback effect where stuff taking time changes the frequency with which throttled functions are executed, which then also affects the timings...

Dragun101

What does the throttling even a thing?

Giebmasse

Is disabling the avatar updates in anyway noticeable in terms of reduced UI lag or otherwise improved performance?

Uveso

@crispweed

yes if my mods loads after yours then my mod will overwrite and delete your hook.
In this case your mod simply don't work.

On the other side if your mod is loading last, then everything is fine.
The hook in my mod is only used to fix the econemy_mini window and is not needed for the functionality of my AI-mod.

So we don't need to change the hook, just be sure that both mods are not active while testing beat functions.

Just for info, these are the lines who did not work if the function is not called every beat:
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/blob/deploy/fafdevelop/lua/ui/game/economy.lua#L402
Income per second (incomeSec) is calculated on the base of simFrequency.
In case this function is not called every beat it will produce negative numbers for income.
Those numbers are floored to 0 (zero), thats why you see 0 for income in the eco window as user.

crispweed

@uveso

If it's just about wanting to prevent your beat function from being skipped, maybe you could just change the following line:

GameMain.AddBeatFunction(_BeatFunction, true)

to

GameMain.AddBeatFunction(_BeatFunction)

The point is that the second parameter to GameMain.AddBeatFunction() says whether the beat function you are adding should be throttled, as I understand.

And then maybe you wouldn't need to destructively hook OnBeat().

(I haven't read all the code involved though, and I could definitely be misunderstanding the situation.)

crispweed

@giebmasse said in Benchmarking time spent in beat functions, 'avatar update' is very expensive:

Is disabling the avatar updates in anyway noticeable in terms of reduced UI lag or otherwise improved performance?

So I've had issues with lag in the past that seemed to me to be related to beat functions taking too long. This includes an issue with the UI refusing to accept my commands, in certain situations, as well as more general problems with UI responsiveness. I'm pretty sure that reducing time in beat functions has helped a lot with this problem, for me.

It's going to depend on the machine you are playing on, and stuff like that, I guess. And just avatar updates by itself may not be an issue, whereas the time spent in this plus time spent in other UI mods may become an issue, depending on what kind of mods you are using..

Uveso

@crispweed

i am hooking the beatfunction destructive because i test the function for a gamepatch.
I plan to remove the beat throttling completely from the game. ( i can't see any speedimprovements here on my PC)

In case you have a better solution, then we can patch your code to the game.

Just be sure you don't throttle the eco stuff.

crispweed

@uveso said in Benchmarking time spent in beat functions, 'avatar update' is very expensive:

@crispweed

i am hooking the beatfunction destructive because i test the function for a gamepatch.
I plan to remove the beat throttling completely from the game. ( i can't see any speedimprovements here on my PC)

OK.

Got to say I did wonder how useful this throttling actually is.

I mean, with the way this is setup, it seems like, as more units get created, and the game slows down, the 'throttled' functions are actually going to be run in more game ticks..

Eternal-

This post is deleted!